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The Jerusalem latrine was found in the Christian Quarter of the Old City, close to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1996 during excavations of a cesspool in the courtyard of a Spanish school. A microscopic fish tapeworm egg found in the medieval latrine at Riga. (photo credit: IVY YEH) From the bowels of history comes a study published this week in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B at Cambridge University in England, which details a first attempt at using the methods of ancient bacterial detection, pioneered in studies of past epidemics, to characterize the microbial...

The excavation of a roughly 500-year-old latrine in Jerusalem has uncovered thousands of eggs from human parasites, including some that may have come from Northern Europe, a new study finds. The people who used the latrine may have been long-distance traders or on a pilgrimage, likely from Northern Europe, where these parasites were common, the researchers said. "While we will never know for sure why they made this journey, pilgrims and traders would be a plausible explanation," said the study's senior researcher, Piers Mitchell, a lecturer of biological anthropology at the University of Cambridge in England. [See Images of the...

It is now possible to tell the story of mankind's presence and evolution on the planet by analyzing trends in soil and sediment accumulation of fecal sterols, chemical compounds which are crucial in human physiology. Scientists at Ca' Foscari University of Venice and the Institute for the Dynamics of Environmental Processes of the National Research Council (CNR-IDPA) have identified and dated traces of sterols within the sediments of two New Zealand lakes, thus proving the presence of the Maori people who, starting from around 1280, colonized the two oceanic islands and cleared them of forests in just a few decades...

New research published today in the Journal of Archeaological Science Reports reveals how archeologists can determine when a pot was used by Romans as a portable toilet, known as a chamber pot."Conical pots of this type have been recognized quite widely in the Roman Empire and in the absence of other evidence they have often been called storage jars. The discovery of many in or near public latrines had led to a suggestion that they might have been used as chamber pots, but until now proof has been lacking," says Roger Wilson, a professor in UBC's department of classical, Near...

Human fecal matter uncovered from a lake in Guatemala reveals the Maya population living in the ancient city of Itzan declined during four different periods over the course of 3,300 years - and climate change was to blame. A team of scientists led by McGill University found the fecal matter in sediments in Laguna Itzan, which confirmed droughts plagued the area from 90 to 280 AD, 730 to 900 AD and 1350 to 950 BC, all of which saw the Maya population drop. The team also determined there was a very wet period from 400 to 210 BC, 'something which...

3D reconstruction of Triamyxa coprolithica. (Qvarnström et al.) =============================================================================== Way back in the Late Triassic period, in what is now modern day Poland, a long-snouted dinosaur ate a big meal of green algae and then took a poop. It was a day like any other for the animal, but for us, roughly 230-million years later, those very fossilized feces have revealed an entire family of undigested beetles. The insects are the first to be described from fossilized feces and they are unlike anything we've discovered in amber before. Not only are these insects much more ancient, their legs and antennae...